Back to Close Tab

A Chromium extension (Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge, Brave): pressing Back when the tab has no back history left closes the tab instead of doing nothing.

Install

Get it on the Chrome Web Store — works in Chrome, Vivaldi, Edge and Brave.

Or run it from source:

1. Open vivaldi://extensions (or chrome://extensions)
2. Turn on Developer mode (top right)
3. Load unpacked → pick this folder

No further configuration. ⌘←, ⌘[ and the mouse back button all work as they are — you do not need to rebind anything in Vivaldi.

What it can and cannot hook

Extensions get no access to the browser's own UI, so:

Back trigger	Works?
Mouse back button over a page	Yes
⌘← while a page has focus	Yes
⌘[ while a page has focus	Yes
Extension shortcut you assign yourself	Yes, on every page
Toolbar ‹ button	No — extensions cannot see clicks on browser UI
Two-finger swipe back	No — the gesture never reaches the page

The first three need a page in focus, and cannot work where extensions are not allowed to run: vivaldi://…, the Chrome Web Store, the PDF viewer, the start page. Assigning a shortcut (below) covers those.

If nothing happens for you, the likely reason is that you are using the toolbar button or the trackpad swipe. Check with the mouse button or ⌘← on an ordinary web page first.

If your mouse button does nothing

Mouse software often intercepts the thumb buttons and replays something else instead of passing the raw button through, so the page never sees a back button at all. Logitech Options+ does this: its Back preset for a button is a macro playback, not a passthrough.

Check what your button actually emits — open any page's console and run

addEventListener('mousedown', e => console.log('mousedown button', e.button))
addEventListener('keydown', e => console.log('keydown', e.key, 'meta=' + e.metaKey))

then press the button. button 3, or a ⌘[ / ⌘← keydown, are all handled. If nothing is logged, your mouse software is sending something the page cannot observe.

Logitech Options+ (confirmed fix)

Options+ applies a per-application profile, so fix it for Vivaldi only:

1. Open Options+ → add an application profile for Vivaldi
2. Assign the back thumb button the keystroke ⌘[

That replaces the opaque Back macro with a real keystroke, which the page receives as a normal keydown and the extension handles. Nothing else to configure — no extension shortcut, no instant mode.

Confirmed working on a Logitech M720 Triathlon.

Route that always works

If your mouse software has no per-app profiles, or the above is not available:

1. In your mouse software, assign the button a custom keystroke that Vivaldi does not already use — ⌃⌥⌘B is a safe choice.
2. In vivaldi://extensions/shortcuts, assign that same combo to Back to Close Tab.
3. In the extension's options, turn on Assigned shortcut responds instantly.

This path does not depend on the page seeing anything, so it also works on vivaldi:// pages, the start page and the PDF viewer.

Optional keyboard shortcut

The extension ships with no key bound, on purpose — auto-claiming a key Vivaldi already uses makes both act, which sends you back two pages. To assign one, open vivaldi://extensions/shortcuts and set a key on Back to Close Tab.

Assigning a key Vivaldi already uses for Back is safe: Vivaldi navigates, the extension notices and stands down. Nothing needs to be unbound.

Options

Right-click the extension → Options:

• Mouse back button — on
• In-page ⌘[ / ⌘← — on
• Never close pinned tabs — on
• Never close the last tab in a window — off (so the window closes with it)
• Only close tabs opened from another tab — off
• Assigned shortcut responds instantly — off. Turn on only when the key you assigned is not also a Vivaldi shortcut (see above); it removes a ~0.25s delay.

A closed tab comes back with ⌘⇧T.

How it decides

The extension never guesses whether back history exists — a wrong guess closes a tab that should have navigated. (history.length cannot tell "no back history" from "already went back", and navigation.canGoBack reports false for every cross-origin entry, so both would close tabs constantly.) Instead:

1. A page-level listener notices the back gesture and reports it. It never calls preventDefault(), so Vivaldi's own back behaviour is untouched.
2. The service worker watches that tab for ~250 ms (WATCH_MS in background.js). If a top-frame navigation starts, Vivaldi handled it and the extension stops there. This is what makes double-handling impossible.
3. If nothing navigated, it calls chrome.tabs.goBack(). That call is the ground truth: it navigates if there was history, and rejects with "Cannot find a next page in history" if not — the only case that closes the tab.

Step 3 also covers the reverse: if Vivaldi did not act on the gesture at all, the extension performs the back navigation itself.

Tests

./test/test.sh

Launches Vivaldi with a throwaway profile (your real profile is untouched), side-loads the extension over the CDP pipe, and drives real input events against a local test site. BROWSER_BIN=/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome switches browsers — though Chrome 137+ blocks the side-load path this uses.

There is a second, optional suite that drives the browser with real macOS input events (CGEvent) rather than CDP injection — the same layer a mouse driver operates at, and below the browser's own shortcut handling, which CDP injection bypasses:

./test/os-input/run.sh

It needs Accessibility permission for your terminal. It is what caught the mouse-hold bug below, so it is worth running after changes to content.js.

Verified 18/18 in both Vivaldi 8.1.4087.68 (Chromium 150) and Chrome 151.0.7922.138, plus 8/8 real-input in each:

PASS  page receives button-3 mousedown
PASS  page receives Cmd+Left keydown
PASS  Cmd+Left with history goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  mouse back with history goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  mouse back, no history -> tab closes
PASS  back to first entry then back again -> tab closes
PASS  SPA pushState back navigates in-document, no close
PASS  with in-page key trigger OFF, Cmd+Left still closes (= command path)
PASS  Cmd+[ with history goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  Cmd+[ with no history -> tab closes
PASS  pinned tab with no history is NOT closed
PASS  registered command shortcut
PASS  mouse back held 50ms goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  mouse back held 300ms goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  mouse back held 700ms goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  mouse back held 1500ms goes back EXACTLY one page
PASS  command path: guarded mode closes a no-history tab
PASS  command path: instant mode goes back one page

and with real OS-level input, 8/8 — including mousedown button=3, ⌘[ and ⌘← all reaching the page, and each closing a no-history tab.

Why the gesture is timed from mouse-up

The browser navigates back on mouse up. Timing the watch window from mouse down meant any press held longer than 250 ms expired the window while the button was still down, so the extension navigated and then the browser did too:

hold	result before the fix
50 ms	one page back
300 ms	two pages back
700 ms	two pages back

A deliberate press easily exceeds 250 ms, so this hit constantly. The gesture is now reported on release, with the press timestamp sent along so the worker also recognises a navigation that happened during the hold.

Publishing

./build.sh

produces dist/back-to-close-tab-<version>.zip — runtime files only, no tests or docs. See store/STORE.md for the listing copy, the permission justifications, and the submission checklist.

The extension requests only tabs, webNavigation and storage. It does not declare host_permissions: chrome.tabs.goBack() works without it (verified by the suite passing with it removed). Broad host access still appears at install, because the content script matches <all_urls> — that is unavoidable for an extension that must notice a gesture on any page.

Files

• manifest.json — MV3 manifest, permissions, command
• background.js — navigation bookkeeping and the back-or-close decision
• content.js — in-page gesture detection (observe only)
• options.html / options.js — settings
• test/ — CDP end-to-end harness
• test/os-input/ — optional real-macOS-input harness
• build.sh — produces the Web Store upload zip
• store/ — listing copy, permission justifications, screenshot
• PRIVACY.md, LICENSE